


Lost and Found

by GenericUsername01



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Drug Use, M/M, Past Underage, Period-Typical Homophobia, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Story: The Adventure of Black Peter, Stupidity, i too wish i hadn't written this, if you read my star trek fics and you're disappointed in me now then im fucking sorry, past super unhealthy relationship, sorry - Freeform, the holmes parents are... different, with victor trevor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: In which John Watson's soulmark is the name 'William' and Sherlock doesn't have one.





	1. Chapter 1

In the very upper echelons of British society, marrying within one’s own social class is a requirement as good as law. The existence of soulmates sometimes complicates this, but there are ways around any problem.

When Sherlock was born, the name ‘John’ was written clear as day on his skin, imprinted across his left shoulder. Siger Holmes immediately had the doctors take the child away to the operating theater. Both parents signed off all the consent forms, and Mycroft watched blandly as his new little brother was taken away.

The procedure had been performed on him as well, of course. He would never know who his soulmate is. At seven, he has already decided that it doesn’t matter. Caring is not an advantage, and so he will not.

The surgeons cut away a neat little rectangle of skin from Sherlock and replace it with a graft. The newborn is heavily bandaged and medicated by the time he is returned to his family.

And that was that.

* * *

 

In kindergarten, John learns the alphabet song, how to tie his shoes, how to count to one hundred, how to write all the letters, and what the name on the right side of his ribs means.

The name is ‘William’ and John is never supposed to tell anybody. Only his family knows.

Harry’s name is ‘Clara’ and that’s a secret too. But when they learn about soulnames, some of the kids in John’s class talk about theirs. So maybe it isn’t a secret?

But then he realizes something. All of the girls in his class have boy names and all the boys in his class have girl names. But John doesn’t. His is different.

Is that why it’s a secret?

* * *

 

‘William’ is in the top ten most common names in England usually, though the specific number changes year to year. And despite the stereotype, ‘John’ isn’t actually that common a name anymore, not even in the top one hundred. People don’t name their babies ‘John’ nowadays. They just don’t.

John’s grade at school has three Williams, two Billys, and one Willie. The grade above him has four, and the one below has five—one of whom is a girl.

John is seven and so he’s a bit young for despair. Plus he likes to think of himself as a proper, respectably stoic Englishman. And so he reminds himself firmly that he _will_ meet his soulmate one day. 1.4% never do, but John won’t be in that percent. He can’t be.

Perhaps he’s very clever, William. The cleverest boy that John will ever meet. Perhaps he’s just months away from finding the right John, with his rarer name, and then they’ll live happily ever after.

Yes, John thinks. Perhaps.

* * *

 

He is nine when Kyle Lambert—his very best friend in the whole entire world—tells him his biggest secret. John is prompted to respond in kind, and he doesn’t hesitate at all. He tells Kyle his biggest secret and reveals his soulname.

Kyle gasps, whispers “faggot,” and runs away.

He told him on the playground on a Thursday. By Monday, the entire school knew.

About three quarters of his friends stop speaking to him. Some ask questions that make John feel dirty. A group of boys in school start a thankfully mild campaign of harassment.

Kyle is one of them. They never speak to each other. He stands on the fringes of the group, never saying or doing anything, not helping either side. But it doesn’t matter, really. Even if he isn’t helping the bullies, he is standing with them, and John knows what that means.

* * *

 

William is six when he enters school for the first time.

He does not learn the alphabet or how to count to one hundred. He already knows all of it, and is bored out of his mind.

Apparently the other children do not though, and he does learn one thing: he is absolutely surrounded by idiots.

Mycroft was _wrong._ Even is William is stupid compared to him, he can’t possibly be genuinely stupid. These simpletons have given a new meaning to the word.

There are two other Williams in his class and a Bill, and that is intolerable. What’s worse is when not one, but _several_ people shorten his name to Will, or—appallingly— _Willy._

He is mistaken for and mixed up with his name-stealing classmates four times that day. He comes home in a storm of fury.

His parents are both in the sitting room, thankfully, but stupid Mycroft is away at stupid Eton. He’ll have to call him to inform him.

“I will no longer answer to the name William,” he announced. “It’s too common. It’s _ordinary._ I refuse to be mistaken for people whose IQ’s are barely higher than that of a dog’s. There is only one me, and everyone should be perfectly aware of that.”

Violet Holmes gave a small smile. “I see. You want a unique, exceptional name, just like your big brother Mycroft.”

“Yes, exactly,” he said. “Wait, no! Not like Mycroft! Like _me._ Like… Sherlock. Call me Sherlock.”

* * *

 

John is twelve when he realizes he likes girls too and has a subsequent crisis.

He goes to Harry, naturally.

“What if the name is wrong?” he asked. “I like girls, Harry!”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, John. You’re such an idiot. You do know you can like both, right?”

“What?”

“…Bisexual. That’s the word for it. Liking both boys and girls. There’s gay, straight, and bisexual.”

“Oh,” he said. “So—”

“You’re an idiot,” she said. “The name isn’t wrong. Names are never wrong. _You’re_ wrong. Now get out of my room.”

* * *

 

Sherlock is nine when his parents finally cave and have him tested psychologically. It takes several thousand pounds, nine hours of testing, four appointments, an hour and a half’s drive there and then again to get back, a three month waiting list before even the intake, and then a three week waiting period while the results are compiled into a report. Then there’s one last hour long appointment for a psychologist to go over the report with them.

They had Sherlock screened comprehensively, for every disorder in the book. The results came back as just high-functioning autism, which the entire Holmes family frankly had a hard time believing.

The psychologist painstakingly explained how the results had been arrived at, what every single test had shown, what this meant, and then made her recommendations.

Sherlock is autistic. Just autistic. He has other issues psychologically, but they do not add up to any diagnosable disorder and are all just a result of his childhood so far. Severe isolation, alienation, ostracization, some bullying, combined with autism, and you get a child who acts like Sherlock Holmes.

The psychologist tells them it’s possible that Sherlock may develop Narcissistic Personality Disorder later on, but personality disorders can’t be diagnosed in minors. He doesn’t show all the signs, she says, yet.

He goes to school the next day and tells everyone who will listen that he’s a high-functioning sociopath. A boy named Everett asks if that’s why he doesn’t have a soulmark, and he says yes.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock is fifteen when he starts university.

All the people there fucking hated him.

Except for two: Sebastian Wilkes and Victor Trevor.

Now, it was quite possible that those two actually hated him as well and only put on a pretense of tolerating him because they wanted to use, and Sherlock reminded himself of that firmly. But still. It was… exhilarating, to have people in his life who seemed to care, even if they truly only did seem to.

He met Sebastian first, when they were both freshmen and in some of the same classes, though Sebastian himself was four years older. Sherlock paid attention in class intermittently, only when they were teaching something useful and/or interesting. He was a chemistry major, and since a lot of his classes involved that, he actually ended up participating more often than not.

Sherlock was a hellish student. He was rude, abrasive, incapable of working in a group or with a partner, and lazy if the subject matter wasn’t interesting enough for him. He was in the top five in all of his classes. Just about every other student wished the kid would get lost, especially when he would deduce private matters that really should stay private. He broke up eight different couples within his first month alone, made two professors cry, and got one fired.

Sebastian, as the campus’s most elite drug dealer, was interested.

He soon learned that Sherlock was not interested in being paid; at least, not in cash. But everyone has a price in Sebastian’s world. Everyone has something they want that they would work to get. And Sherlock Holmes wants to stop being bored.

Sebastian gives him cocaine, and the kid takes to it like a fly to honey.

Sherlock deduces undercover cops and moles and petty thieves. Sebastian starts bringing him everywhere with him. The kid is jittery and wide-eyed and talking a mile a minute as he performs his little party trick and makes Sebastian all the more powerful with every word. It’s expensive, giving Sherlock essentially free cocaine, but the kid more than earns his keep. He’s kept Sebastian from getting caught at least five times, once even talked a police officer out of arresting him.

Sebastian gives him a set amount, never any more, no matter how much he begs or offers to pay. He doesn’t want the little freak to kill himself.

Sherlock is seventeen when he meets twenty-two year old Victor Trevor, and _that’s_ when everything goes to shit, in Sebastian’s mind.

Six months later, Sherlock steals from Sebastian’s supply and overdoses. He’s in the hospital for a week.

His family all come to see him, his father’s face stony and his mother crying and Mycroft looking so incredibly disappointed.

He goes back to school, refusing rehab and promising to get clean on his own. He lasts eleven days.

Victor makes him beg to take him back, and then puts on a show of doing so begrudgingly. He takes Sherlock hard and rough that night, on his hands and knees, making the teenager scream.

And things are okay, except they’re also horrible, and four months later, Sherlock and Victor have a row, _again,_ but this time Victor slaps him, hard, for the first time ever, and Sherlock runs out of the dorm and goes and has his second overdose.

Rehab is non-negotiable this time: six months in a private facility at his parents’ expense. He can return to school when he’s clean.

Withdrawal is hell. He feels like he’s dying. He _wishes_ he was dying.

He spends his eighteenth birthday in there. They bring him a sad little cake with white frosting.

He gets clean, he goes back to school. Sebastian finds him again, and Sherlock refuses, at first.

But then Victor finds him and refusing Victor has always been futile. It really feels all so much better when he’s on drugs, though, so after Victor’s done with him and has fallen asleep, Sherlock slips out of the dorm to go find Sebastian. He can’t stand one without the other. The two will always go hand in hand.

Sebastian graduates all too quickly and disappears out of Sherlock’s life, and Victor does too, both at the same time. They have a row about it, Victor wanting Sherlock to leave school and come live with him, and Sherlock insisting that learning all that he can about chemistry is simply too important. He’s already behind from his stint in rehab, and he fully intends to get his doctorate.

Victor leaves and Sherlock gets high as a kite but he doesn’t overdose. He’s starting to learn his limits a bit better, or maybe he’s building up his tolerance. It doesn’t really matter. He’s not on Sebastian’s program of fucking _rations_ anymore, and he’s found a new dealer who doesn’t give two shits how much he takes, as long as he pays up.

He burns through his monthly allowance in less than a week. He gets a free meal here and there, and loses ten pounds.

The next month comes, and so does his allowance.

The month after that, after he’s blown all his money yet again, his parents come to see him and it quickly devolves into a screaming match that ends with Sherlock being cut off and disinherited. He’s told not to come home for Christmas that year unless he’s clean.

So he doesn’t go home for Christmas that year. He spends December 25th blowing a junkie in a back alley because he had no money but he needed a hit.

At some point he’s too high too regularly to continue attending class. He was half-dropped out already by the time he got formally expelled.

He is… not a doctor. He is homeless. He sometimes sells himself. His life revolves around the next hit. Always.

He vaguely wonders where he went wrong.

* * *

 

John is a bit poor and a bit looking for adventure and so he joins the military to pay for med school. It’s bloody hot, he gets sand everywhere, and a lieutenant tells him early on to keep a bandage on over his soulmark so the guys don’t see it.

He meets people he will never forget for the rest of his life, and he thinks, _how can I come back from this?_

It’s too extraordinary. For all it’s horribleness, he is keenly aware that he is living the most memorable years of his life, that nothing will ever compare or measure up to this.

Then he gets fucking shot and sent back home with a tremor in his left, dominant, surgeon’s hand. He’ll never operate again, and his part in the war is over. One measly bullet lodged in his shoulder, and he’s useless now. They may as well stamp it on his forehead.

He gets a bedsit and a crap therapist and Harry’s phone and pity.

It feels a bit like all the good parts of his life are already over.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock isn’t upset that he got arrested. He’s _deeply_ upset that he failed to deduce that the man posing as a dealer was, in fact, an undercover policeman.

He’s ashamed of himself.

And now the constable won’t shut up and is droning on, attempting to scare Sherlock straight. As if that’s even possible at this point. The man could shoot him in the head and Sherlock would merely be miffed he didn’t see it coming.

He’s charged with attempting to purchase a Class A substance and thrown into a cell. He amuses himself by annoying the absolute hell out of everyone within hearing distance.

Another criminal threatens to kill him and they are summarily separated. Sherlock smirks, and, having deduced everything of interest about the man, moves on to the guards. They begin to look like they regretted not letting him be killed.

And then Mycroft appears with the constable from earlier and Sherlock’s good mood dissipates instantly. He scowls.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Posting bail,” Mycroft said. “You’re losing your touch, brother mine. Attempting to buy from an undercover cop? Really? Have you fallen so far?”

“Shut up,” he said. “You’ve put on five pounds. You’re courting a woman who’s upset by it. I do hope you marry her. It’s good for your ego to be insulted constantly, and I simply can’t spare the time.”

“Oh yes. How are midterms going? Are you doing well on your thesis?” he asked, dripping sarcasm.

“It’s going great, actually. I’m differentiating 243 types of tobacco ash based on chemical and physical properties.”

He was still writing it, despite no longer having any use for it. It and all its data were scrawled messily on a cheap, worn notebook stuffed in his coat pocket.

Mycroft’s eyes flicked over him, and his expression turned pitying. “I see,” he said. He made a motion with his hand, and a guard came forward and unlocked the cell. “Come along then.”

* * *

 

Mycroft took him back to his estate. He let him borrow some of his clothes, making Sherlock put on clean, warm pajamas while his assistant went out and bought him some of his own things.

He eats a full, five-course meal ravenously and then falls asleep for sixteen hours in a plush bed with silk sheets and a fireplace in the room.

He stays there for two more days before stealing Mycroft’s most expensive car and selling it for drug money.

He reports it stolen, and Sherlock is arrested again, because even the world’s biggest idiot can tell that he did it. Mycroft doesn’t post his bail this time, and Sherlock is given the choice between jail time and rehab. He briefly considers it, and then chooses rehab.

He gets clean and then he begins bothering the police. They all hate him too, but he’s prepared for that. There’s been a triple homicide, and none of them are looking in the right places. He brings his deductions to the detective inspector working the case—Gregson—who does not listen. And then he takes it to a sergeant on her team. A different sergeant. A constable. Three other constables. The newbie constable who just got transferred to homicide and is anxious to prove himself.

Newbie constable listens to him, presents the deductions in compliance with the evidence as his own, and impresses the hell out of his boss.

Sherlock calls in four anonymous tips in the next two weeks, the way he did to stave off the boredom while in rehab. Then there’s finally a case of interest—a locked room murder—that warrants his personal appearance at the crime scene.

Newbie constable wanders over to greet him awkwardly.

“Got any tips?” he asked, trying to play it off as a joke but genuinely wanting the help.

“I need to see the actual scene. The room, the body. You have to let me in,” Sherlock said.

“I can’t,” he said. “Civilians aren’t allowed.”

“Consultants are.”

“Yeah, consultants who are experts in their field.”

“I’m an expert in detection. Consider me a consulting detective.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It could be,” he said. “It would be very simple to make it ‘a thing’ and then I could solve this case and so many others for you.”

The constable sighed. “I’ll need a week,” he said. “To get everything around, create the paperwork and get it all approved. I’m not sure it’ll even work.”

“It will,” Sherlock said. “I’ll make sure it will.”

The constable grimaced. “I don’t wanna know, do I?”

Sherlock smiled his terrifying, ‘sociopath’ smile. “No, Constable, I don’t think that you do.”

* * *

 

He calls in a favor with Mycroft. Normally, this is the sort of thing that he would go to his father with, but he no longer considers that a viable option. Mycroft has followed in their father’s footsteps and taken up a role in the government, rising rapidly, and now has strings he can pull.

He makes Sherlock submit to an immediate drugs test before he’s willing to do anything for him. He informs him that he now owes him a huge favor, no limits and no questions asked, to be called in whenever Mycroft feels like it.

He doesn’t get to work the locked-room murder but he does get the next case, in which a man was quite elegantly framed, almost enough to fool even Sherlock. But not quite. He is ecstatic, he is on fire, he feels like he’s glowing—

“What a freak.”

He turns, genuinely confused for a moment. He understands why people call him a freak when he deduces secrets they’d rather keep private—displacement, defense mechanism, little more than shooting the messenger. But this doesn’t make sense. He just cleared an innocent (well, semi-innocent) man’s name and caught a guilty one, surely that’s a good thing?

“A woman’s been murdered, and you’re standing there beaming like it’s Christmas morning,” the constable explains. “The hell is wrong with you?”

His smile returns, sharper and icy now. “I’m a high-functioning sociopath,” he said. “Obviously.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock has been living in a crap apartment on Montague street that he absolutely cannot afford, and he’s only managed the rent so far through pure luck of rich clients who insisted on paying him for solving their cases. And also, maybe, a bit of what he doesn’t like to think of as proper ‘prostitution’ on the side.

He gets permission to work in Bart’s morgue and its labs through his work with the police and wins special favors for himself because the pathologist has a hopeless crush on him. He does absolutely nothing to encourage this. Or discourage it. It does get him special favors, after all. And it’s not like she thinks he’s her soulmate; after all, how many people out there are really named Sherlock? It’s likely _no one_ has that name on them.

But Molly continues her dogmatic pursuit regardless—curious, almost as good as a case. Makes no sense. She occasionally dates other men, briefly, and every last one of them turns out to be gay and have deep psychological issues. She is obviously subconsciously seeking out men she knows it can never work out with. Conclusion: lesbian in denial. Her soulmark is clearly a woman’s name, one she has no interest in finding. Pity.

Sherlock debates telling her this, but she’d probably get mad and stop giving him body parts. He simply can’t have that. The Work is too important.

* * *

 

John saw Mike, of course, ever aware of his surroundings as he is. And he recognized him too.

Then he ducked his head and kept walking, but the bastard called out to him, and John cursed internally.

He reintroduced himself, thinking John didn’t recognize him and making a joke about how he got fat, and John gives a tight smile and shakes his hand.

Somehow he is talked into getting coffee, dreadfully, and sitting on the park bench to sip it and talk. Which he supposes is better than going back to his bedsit or forcing himself to walk and aggravating his leg, but still, it’s pretty much the last thing he wants to do.

It feels like everything is the last thing he wants to do.

“What about you, just staying in town ‘til you get yourself sorted?” Mike asked.

“I can’t afford London on an Army pension.”

“And you couldn’t bear to be anywhere else. That’s not the John Watson I know.”

“I’m not the John Watson—” he cut himself off abruptly. Not exactly small talk, that.

“Couldn’t Harry help?” Mike asked.

He scoffed. “Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen.”

“I don’t know, get a flat share or something?”

“Come on, who’d want me for a flatmate?”

Mike grinned.

“What?”

“You’re the second person to say that to me today.”

* * *

 

Mike brings in a limping military man who trained at Bart’s with him. Why? Options: A) Look At The Freak, B) new doctor here, touring the labs, C) potential flatmate, based on this morning’s conversation, D) client?

He gives him his phone to borrow, and Sherlock catches a glimpse of his tan—stops at the wrist, was likely darker at some point but isn’t even close to fading completely. Recently discharged, then. Does not make any of the options more or less likely.

Mike doesn’t show him around at all or even introduce them, eliminating Option B entirely and making Option A the most likely. The new man has been brought here with no apparent purpose other than just to watch to Sherlock.

God, he hates Look At The Freak. Odd, he didn’t think Mike had been the type for it. But then again, Sherlock was a _fascinating_ oddity. Whatever else, Mike’s recently discharged friend was in need of something: a job, a flat, a solution. Entertainment.

And Mike was a good friend, so he would arrange for it. Of course.

He was painfully aware of his and Mike’s respective standings at this institution and how tenuous his permission to use the labs was, though, so he played along like a good little freak, as Sebastian would say.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asked, not looking at John.

“Sorry?”

“Which was it, Afghanistan or Iraq?”

Mike grinned, and John seemed to get it, finally.

“Afghanistan. Sorry, how did you know—”

Molly walked in with the coffee then, and Sherlock was gratefully relieved, loudly announcing the interruption.

It occurred to him that it would be horrifically arrogant to assume John was his intended potential flatmate, and it would also ease along and satisfy the usual requirements of Look At The Freak, so naturally he went with that.

“How do you feel about the violin?” he asked.

“Sorry, what?”

God, he says ‘sorry’ dreadfully often, doesn’t he? The word serves no purpose, save manipulation, of course.

“I play the violin when I’m thinking and sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

Those are far from the worst things about Sherlock and both he and Mike know it, but they go a long way to making him sound like an eccentric genius. Makes for a good show.

“You told him about me?” John asked Mike.

“Not a word,” he said.

“Who said anything about flatmates?”

“I did. I told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is, just after lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn’t a difficult leap.”

“How did you know about Afghanistan?”

Ooh, not yet, Sherlock does love a big finale.

“Got my eye on a nice little place in central London,” he said, ignoring that. “Together we ought to be able to afford it. We’ll meet there tomorrow, 7:00. Sorry, got to dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”

As if it’s absolutely imperative that it be retrieved right that second, and that’s clearly where he’s going, what with the coat and scarf. But it’s unlikely John will deduce anything about him.

“Is that it?” he asked.

_Seriously?_

“Is that what?” Sherlock asked, pausing just before the door.

“We’ve only just met and we’re going to go look at a flat?”

Had Mike really brought him as a potential flatmate? No. Preposterous.

“Problem?” he asked. John looked to Mike with a half-grin, who gave a knowing smile back.

It was _definitely_ Look At The Freak.

“We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know where we’re meeting, I don’t even know your name.”

And now, for the grand finale…

“I know you’re an Army doctor. I know you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you, but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him, possibly because he’s an alcoholic and more likely because he recently walked out on his soulmate. I know your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic—quite correctly, I’m afraid. That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”

He opened the door and leaned partially out of it, dramatically. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

He winks and he’s gone.

John is dumbstruck.


	5. Chapter 5

John—shockingly—actually shows up the next day.

He calls him Mr. Holmes and his belongings rubbish, but that’s fairly to be expected. Not the Mr. Holmes bit, actually. Only clients call him Mr. Holmes, and even that is inconsistent.

Overall, Sherlock made a horrible impression. The flat was trashy, messy, John was perturbed by the skull, he had looked Sherlock up last night and thought he was a fraud, and he absolutely did not like Mrs. Hudson’s implication that they were together.

This is… unusual. It’s not that Sherlock was trying especially hard to impress John, but he was trying, and he usually succeeded with flying colors. At least at first brush, until whomever he was dealing with became boring to him, or worse, useless.

But then Lestrade showed up with a fourth serial suicide and John no longer really mattered. He would hate Sherlock in a matter of days anyway. He knew getting a flatmate was a lost cause, but that had been a stipulation of Mrs. Hudson’s special deal.

(A special deal, not a discount, and Sherlock meant what he said. His half the rent was a mere pittance as long as he stayed clean and kept someone around to ‘look after him.’)

Lestrade—the ‘newbie constable’ from five years ago—had become Sherlock’s unofficial handler when he worked Yard cases. On the one hand, it didn’t make him many friends at work. On the other hand, he got all the credit whenever Sherlock solved a case, and had received promotion after rapid promotion and now was the DI in charge of homicide. Well worth putting up with an arsehole and self-declared sociopath for such a career-minded man.

The new victim had left a note and Sherlock became a whirlwind of excitement the second Lestrade stepped out (Lestrade is unnerved whenever Sherlock gets excited about murder. Not that Sherlock cares about what he thinks.). He spun out of the room and was halfway down the steps when he heard John shout, “Damn my leg!”

He paused.

And then he went back up the stairs to stare at John and try to parse that out.

“You’re a doctor,” he murmured, drawing his attention. High-pressure job. Type A personality. “In fact, you’re an army doctor.”

Army doctor meant surgeon, trauma surgeon. A trauma surgeon who specifically chose to go to war. Why? Saving lives, ostensibly. He could do that at home though, without bullets flying at him as he tries to concentrate. Conclusion: the war added to the appeal. Increased moral high ground? Superiority complex, high levels of narcissism? Possibly.

Or.

Or he’s an adrenaline junkie and Sherlock isn’t the only addict in the room but somehow he completely missed it.

“Yes,” John said, clearing his throat and standing. Very telling. Very good sign.

“Any good?”

“Very good.”

Narcissism as motivating factor is still on the table.

“Seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths.”

“Well, yes.”

“Bit of trouble too, I bet?”

“Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime, far too much.”

Rehearsed answer. Respectable, socially acceptable. Coached, possibly just subconsciously, but without a doubt those are not Dr. John Watson’s own words. Likely assembled from conversations with his brother, old civilian friends, his therapist. Mainly his therapist.

What he would say on his own must be horribly inappropriate. Sherlock is nearly gleeful, but he thinks he masks it superbly.

“Want to see some more?”

“Oh, god, yes.”

* * *

 

John is staring at him in the cab. Sherlock sighs.

He lets him ask his boring, obvious questions and attempts to encourage him to think on his own a bit.

And then John calls him an amateur, and Sherlock smiles sharply and launches off a string of deductions, intensely personal and hitting on what he hopes are sore spots. War, trauma, psychological ailments, estranged family, alcoholism in a loved one, failure of a soulmate relationship.

He’s made people cry, scream, or hit him with less.

And he finishes it off with an arrogant comment.

“That,” John said, tension clear in his voice. “Was amazing.”

Sherlock frowned.

Did not make sense. No options, no deductions, no conclusions.

What the hell?

“You think so?” And as he says it, it occurs to him that no, of course he doesn’t, he set Sherlock up so that his finishing insult would be that much more scathing.

“Of course it was,” John said, inexplicably. “It was extraordinary. It was quite extraordinary.”

His voice was quiet, soft, and he won’t meet Sherlock’s eyes.

“That’s not what people normally say,” he said, half-correcting.

“What do people normally say?”

“Piss off.” _Freak._

They arrive at the crime scene, and John makes a minor correction to one of Sherlock’s deductions—he doesn’t have a brother, he has a lesbian sister with a commonly male name. Always something.

Sally meets them at the edge of the crime scene, and Sherlock introduces them: John as a colleague and Sally as an ‘old friend.’ Anderson warns him not to contaminate the crime scene, Sherlock calls him out on cheating on his soulmate. John repeatedly asks if he truly needs to be there, contradicting his earlier enthusiasm.

But he doesn’t actually make an effort to leave, and Sherlock counts that as a win.

They meet Lestrade and go up to see the victim, and Sherlock deduces quite a bit more than he normally can—circumstance was fortunate. Lestrade even accuses him of just making things up, and he’s seen him work on a regular basis.

“That’s fantastic,” John said, like he meant it. He said it like he meant it.

“Do you know you do that?” Sherlock asked.

“Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

“No, it’s… fine.”

More than fine, exhilarating, inexplicable, a case all on its own, he doesn’t understand.

The case is missing and Sherlock runs around shouting about it, forgetting the mystery of John Watson in favor of Jennifer Wilson. Completely. He flies out of the building and leaves John behind.

He doesn’t notice four over an hour while he searches single-mindedly for the case. He returns to 221B, slaps three nicotine patches on, and flops onto the couch.

He’s come up with the plan of texting the serial killer within a handful of minutes, but he can’t use his phone so he shouts for Mrs. Hudson and then texts John.

_Baker Street. Come at once if convenient. SH_

No reply for exactly one full minute.

_If inconvenient, come anyway. SH_

One more minute.

_Could be dangerous. SH_

He turns his phone off firmly. Anything more would be incessant, borderline needy. If the promise of dangerous doesn’t lure out the adrenaline junkie, then nothing will.

He stares at the ceiling and contemplates the curious case of Dr. John Watson.


	6. Chapter 6

“I’m not his date,” John snapped after Angelo, again. Sherlock brushed his menu aside.

“You may as well eat. We may have a long wait.”

Angelo returned with a candle for the table and a thumbs up to John, who winced through a smile and a thanks. It wasn’t that he had a problem with being seen as Sherlock’s date, far from it. But he didn’t want to make the man uncomfortable and ruin things. John’s track record with men was not exactly the greatest, and Sherlock was far to interesting to risk mucking things up on a fling. He wanted him to be a permanent feature of his life, and that meant things had to stay strictly platonic, seeing as they weren’t soulmates. Lots of people refused to ‘waste time’ with anyone who wasn’t their soulmate.

But then again, Sherlock might not be one of them. Serious, non-soulmate pairs were not unheard of. And if John had even the slightest chance of having that with Sherlock, well, he had to find out, didn’t he?

“People don’t have arch enemies,” he said.

Definitely not what he intended to say. But that definitely was an issue too, so he was going to discuss it, now that it was on the table. A creepy, seemingly all-powerful stranger with an umbrella kidnaps him, tries to bribe him to spy on Sherlock, and then demands to know his soulmate’s name. As if John would actually agree to any of that. The fact that Sherlock knows someone like that is by far the most disturbing thing John has learned about him, which is really saying something.

“I’m sorry?” Sherlock asked.

“In real life,” he clarified. “There are no arch enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen.”

“Doesn’t it? Sounds a bit dull.”

“So who did I meet?”

“What do real people have, then, in their ‘real’ lives?”

“Friends,” he said. “People they know, people they like, people they don’t like. Soulmates.”

“Yes, well, as I was saying—dull.”

“You haven’t found your soulmate yet, then?”

“Hm. Not looking.”

“What?”

“I’m not looking for my soulmate.”

“So you’re unattached then,” John said. “Like me.”

He cleared his throat a bit awkwardly and went back to eating. Sherlock glanced between him and the window, brow furrowed.

“John, um…” he started. “I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered, I’m really not looking for any—”

“No, I’m not… asking. No. I’m just… Plenty of people aren’t with their soulmates, you know. And that’s fine. That’s all fine.”

“…Good,” he said. “Thank you.”

And then a taxi pulled up across the street.

* * *

 

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I knew you’d find the case, I’m not stupid,” Lestrade said.

“You can’t just break into my flat,” Sherlock said, outraged.

“You can’t withhold evidence,” he said. “And I didn’t break into your flat.”

“Well what do you call this, then?” Sherlock snapped.

“It’s a drugs bust,” he said, smiling.

“Seriously? This guy, a junkie?” John asked. “Have you met him?”

Shame coursed through Sherlock like fire.

He had anticipated this, he reminded himself. John was never going to stay. This was a bit sooner than he had expected, however, and he had not predicted Lestrade publicly humiliating him like this, but perhaps he should have expected it.

“John,” Sherlock said quietly. But he kept going.

Lestrade was _grinning._

“I’m pretty sure you could search this flat all day, and you wouldn’t find anything you could call recreational.”

Unique phrasing, implies the expectance of non-recreational drugs. Fair enough. Sherlock isn’t actually on any meds, but it’s a reasonable assumption.

“John, you probably want to shut up now,” he said.

“But come on—”

And then he looked at him.

“No.”

“What?”

_“You?”_

“Shut up,” he said. He turned to face Lestrade. “I’m not your sniffer dog.”

“No, Anderson’s my sniffer dog,” he agreed.

“What? I—”

Anderson appeared in the kitchen and waved.

“Anderson, what are you doing here on a drugs bust?”

“Oh, I volunteered,” he said.

“They all did. They’re not strictly speaking on the drug squad, but they’re very keen.”

“Are these human eyes?” Donovan asked.

“Put those back!” Sherlock snapped. God. He felt on the verge of panic. They shouldn’t be doing this, rummaging through all his stuff, moving things, touching and looking and generally gawking. He was not some sort of sideshow.

Anxious energy hummed through him and he shook his hand a bit to let it out.

“They were in the microwave,” Donovan said.

“It’s an experiment.” He paced across the room and back, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Keep looking, guys,” Lestrade said. “Or you could help us properly and I’ll stand them down.”

“This is childish,” Sherlock said.

“Well, I’m dealing with a child. Sherlock, this is our case. I’m letting you in, but you do not go off on your own. Clear?”

“What, so you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?” he said, finally stopping his pacing.

“It stops being pretend if they find anything,” Lestrade said seriously.

 _“I am clean!”_ he shouted.

“Is your flat? All of it?”

“I don’t even smoke,” he said, suddenly feeling drained.

“Neither do I,” Lestrade said. “So let’s work together.”

* * *

 

John was in the wrong building. John was in the wrong building and Sherlock was across the way with the murderer, holding up one of those godforsaken suicide pills.

He didn’t hesitate at all, just pulled out his gun and lined up the shot. Then waited.

Sherlock held the pill up to the light, brought it to his mouth, opened his lips—

_Bang!_

* * *

 

Sherlock doesn’t get it until he talks to John after he shot the cabbie. Then it all suddenly clicks.

“But he wasn’t a very nice man,” John defended himself, joking.

Joking?

“No. No, he wasn’t, really, was he?”

“Frankly a bloody awful cabbie,” he said.

Sherlock grinned, laughing. He couldn’t believe this. “That’s true, he was a bad cabbie. You should have seen the route he took us to get here.”

“Stop it! We can’t giggle, it’s a crime scene.” But John was smiling too. Sherlock felt like he was flying.

“Well, you’re the one who shot him.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Sorry, it’s just the, erm, nerves, I think. Sorry.”

“You were gonna take that damn pill, weren’t you?”

“Course I wasn’t. Biding my time. Knew you’d turn up.”

“No you didn’t. That’s how you get your kicks, isn’t it? You risk your life to prove you’re clever.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

Sherlock tried his damnedest to suppress a beaming grin, but didn’t come all that close to succeeding. “Dinner?”

“Starving.”

“End of Baker Street there’s a good Chinese. Stays open ‘til 2:00. You can tell a good Chinese by the bottom third of the door handle.”

 _“Sherlock._ That’s him, that’s the man I was talking to you about.”

Mycroft had shown up, which honestly, fucking _why?_ Sherlock wasn’t actually going to kill himself, John was there, he can quit worrying. Honestly.

“I know exactly who that it,” Sherlock said.

“So. Another case cracked. How very public-spirited. Though that’s never really your motivation, is it?” Mycroft asked.

“What are you doing here?”

“As ever, I’m concerned about you.”

“Yes, I’ve been hearing about your ‘concern.’”

“Always so aggressive. Did it ever occur to you that you and I belong on the same side?”

The side of the _law?_ Is that what he meant? He could take his recruitment pamphlets and stuff them.

“Oddly enough… no.”

“We have more in common than you’d like to believe. This petty feud between us is simply childish. People will suffer.”

And they say Sherlock is the drama queen.

“And you know how it always upset Mummy,” Mycroft finished.

John frowned.

“I upset her? Me? It wasn’t me that upset her, Mycroft.”

“No. No, wait. Mummy? Who’s Mummy?” John asked.

“Mother. Our mother. This is my brother, Mycroft,” Sherlock said. “Putting on weight again?”

“Losing it, in fact.”

“He’s your brother?” John asked.

“Of course he’s my brother.”

“So he’s not—”

“Not what?”

“I don’t know. Criminal mastermind?”

“Close enough.”

“For goodness’ sake,” Mycroft said. “I occupy a minor position in the British government.”

“He _is_ the British government. When he’s not too busy being the British Secret Service or the CIA on a freelance basis. Good evening, Mycroft. Try not to start a war before I get home. You know what it does for the traffic.”

He walked a few feet away, not wanting to bother with Mycroft anymore but forced to wait for John to finish talking to him.

Then John joined him and off they went.


	7. Chapter 7

They go to the good Chinese place, which was right across the street from a better Chinese place but they couldn’t go there because Sherlock was banned (he had deduced that the co-owner was skimming funds off the top and insulted her poor methodology for doing so, inadvertently giving tips on how to do it better. Neither she nor her husband had taken it well.).

“Alright, try this one,” John said, holding up a fortune cookie.

Sherlock stared at it intently, pretending it was at all possible to deduce its contents. “Something about luck.”

“They all say something about luck, you git.”

“No they don’t.”

“Yes they do.” He cracked the cookie in half and pulled out the paper. “’Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.’”

“See, I was right.”

“What? No, you weren’t. That had nothing to do with luck.”

“Precisely, thus proving my point that not all of them are about luck,” he said. John grinned and ducked his head, laughing. Sherlock picked up a cookie imperiously. “And this one will say something about love. ‘A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.’ Hmm. I have found that is often the case with the London ‘police,’ but obviously never with myself.”

“Oh, obviously,” John said. “’A foolish man listens to his heart. A wise man listens to cookies.’ Sherlock, I think the fortunes just called you a liar.”

He scoffed. And then picked up another cookie. “’Flattery will go far tonight.’ Clearly, they are random, and therefore meaningless, John. I daresay they don’t even predict the future.”

“I’ll say. Flattery’s gotten me nowhere tonight,” he said. Then his face went pink. “I mean—with Mycroft—his assistant, Anthea, I thought she was—”

Sherlock’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead.

John cleared his throat and blushed harder. “Um. Anyway. Looks like we’re out of fortune cookies.”

“Yes, that does appear to be the case,” he said dryly.

“Oh, shut it. And eat your food, you didn’t have anything earlier.”

Sherlock was so surprised at the command that he actually followed it. He bit back a dopey grin then, sneaking glances at John throughout the dinner. They chatted and joked and when they parted ways, there was a moment where John leaned in to kiss him before he caught himself and Sherlock felt a surge of anticipation.

Curious.

He went back to 221B alone and played rapid violin solos until three a.m., then went to bed and slept ‘til noon.

* * *

 

John showed up at 221B the next day with a few boxes of his things and moved them into the upstairs bedroom. Sherlock was surprised, even now, but hid it well, saying nothing and plucking odd notes on his violin.

An hour later, John was fully moved in and Sherlock had abandoned his violin in favor of examining the effects of various base chemicals on soul ink covered skin samples.

John made tea and brought him a cup and Sherlock looked up at him in confusion. John just raised an eyebrow and sat down in the red chair with his own tea, opening up a newspaper to read.

Sherlock took a hesitant sip of the tea. The ‘Julia’ skin sample was reacting extremely well with the sodium hydroxide. It might be possible for him to dissolve the skin entirely and leave just the soul ink behind. That would be incredibly useful for future experiments, to have distilled soul ink on hand.

He should probably be wearing gloves, especially as he got out increasingly strong bases. Chemical burns weren’t fun, and they drastically hindered his abilities.

The tea was good.

* * *

 

The next day, newly hired Constable Stanley Hopkins came by the flat.

“Okay,” he said. “So I’m not supposed to let you in on this one. Lestrade can’t know I was here.”

“But you’re too far out of your depth to solve the case on your own,” Sherlock said.

“Yeah. It’s… Um, it’s about soulmates.”

John raised an eyebrow. “If the case is that complicated, why wouldn’t Lestrade bring Sherlock in?”

“I don’t work soulmate cases,” Sherlock said.

“Yeah, I know, and that’s what everybody told me. But won’t you please make an exception, Mr. Holmes?”

“You misunderstand,” he said. “Lestrade won’t allow me to work soulmate cases. I have no objection to them myself.”

Hopkins blinked. “What? Why?”

“They are cases just like any other. Refusing to work cases where the primary relationship examined is between soulmates would be as absurd as refusing to work cases involving any other relationship—sibling, parental, platonic, adversarial. It’s ridiculous.”

“No, I mean, why won’t Lestrade let you work soulmate cases?”

“I don’t have a soulmark,” he said. Hopkins drew in a breath sharply, and both his and John’s eyebrows shot up. Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Sociopath, remember? Surely you two are aware of at least that by now.”

“Yeah, I just—” Hopkins cleared his throat. “Never met someone without a soulmate before. Do you—Is that why Donovan—”

“That’s why she refers to me as soulless, yes,” he said. “The case, Hopkins?”

“Right,” he said. “Well. Couple murdered, soulmates, obviously. But the funny thing is, the cause of death, it’s…”

“What? What is it?” Sherlock prompted.

“Spontaneous mutual heart attacks.”

His eyes gleamed and he gave a Cheshire cat smile. “Brilliant,” he said. “Take me to the bodies.”


	8. Chapter 8

Sherlock examined the corpses with disturbing thoroughness, looking simultaneously more and more puzzled and excited. He spent an inordinate amount of time on the toes, before huffing in frustration and leaving the lab entirely, John scrambling to keep up.

“Well?” he asked. “Did you figure it out?”

“No,” he gritted out. “There should have been marks, something, anything. Every _possible_ poison has already been tested and came back negative. Neither of them had any major allergies. Logically, that means they had to die of an infarction caused by an air injection—clever trick to mimic a heart attack—but there are no injection sites _anywhere._ I have to visit the crime scene.”

They did, the crime scene being the couple’s bedroom. They had both died in their sleep sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. For all intents and purposes, it appears that they died almost at the exact same moment.

Sherlock looks at their flat’s door carefully, at every window in the place, paying special attention to the one in the bedroom. He grows slowly more and more frustrated. He stares at the bed from every angle, the closets, the carpet.

“The police are _idiots,”_ he said. “We’ll never be able to tell anything here. Too many feet have trampled over the evidence. It’s all lost.”

“Surely you have something?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I know which side of the bed they both slept on, that the husband snored and the wife farted, they weren’t given to cuddling, and that they have semi-regular sex and use birth control. But about their murders? No, I’ve got nothing.”

He huffed and spared a last, disdainful glance at the bed. “I’m going to go back to the flat and think it over. There’s nothing more to be learned here.”

* * *

 

The case took two more days for him to crack, during which Sherlock ate only scraps under coercion, slept maybe two hours total, and went through far too many nicotine patches. He returned to the victims’ flat three times to check something. He exhaustively played through Bach’s works for twenty hours straight. He paced and sat upside on the couch for hours.

“They weren’t soulmates,” he said suddenly on Monday morning.

“What? Yes they were.”

“No. Their marks matched, but they weren’t soulmates. Luke and Hannah, common names. Statistics would say that there is more than one Luke and Hannah pair in the world.”

“And how did you figure that out?”

“Process of elimination. Nothing else fits. There’s no motive, John, absolutely none. They had plenty of friends and no enemies, no financial trouble or suspicious money movements, both had stable jobs and all their coworkers liked them well enough. There are other possibilities of course: mob ties, secret illegitimate child, et cetera. But none of them are particularly likely. No, it’s a scorned soulmate case. One of them met their real soulmate and rejected them. The soulmate lashes out, plots their revenge, kills them both as they sleep.”

“Okay,” John said. “So which is it? Are you looking for a Luke or a Hannah?”

Sherlock flopped down on the couch forlornly. “I don’t know.”

“Well, what about the break-in? Did that tell you anything?”

“That’s just the thing! There are no signs of a break-in. All the windows are intact and still locked from the inside. The door is completely undamaged. They had a bloody burglar alarm system, and it didn’t go off, but it wasn’t disabled either. The killer walked straight into a locked flat in the dead of night without upsetting a single thing. They didn’t leave a trace.”

John shrugged. “Maybe they had a key.”

Sherlock snorted. Then his eyes widened. “A key! A key was missing from Luke Vanderbilt’s possessions. He’d lost it, made an appointment with a locksmith to get a copy of his wife’s made as a replacement. Only he didn’t lose it.”

“It was stolen,” John said. “By the killer. The other Hannah makes up an excuse to meet him for something, they talk, she pickpockets his key.”

“And she walks right in through the front door and murders them both,” Sherlock said. “Brilliant.”

“So you’re looking for a woman named Hannah, soulmark ‘Luke’, who met with Luke Vanderbilt just in the days before his murder. Should be easy enough to find.”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Yes, extraordinarily so. Uh… thank you.”

“Ey, don’t look at me, mate. You’re the one who solved it.” But he smiled a bit nonetheless, and Sherlock beamed.

It wouldn’t have even occurred to him without John.

* * *

 

John is weirdly possessive about his laptop. Likely thinks he’s hiding something, probably porn, though Sherlock has hardly had time to go through all his files yet, and anyway, he was just reading his email.

But John takes it away mid Sherlock’s scathing reply and he is left at his desk to just sit and think.

The scathing reply is too defensive. Makes him look vulnerable, emotional. No. No, he’ll take Sebastian’s case. Show up with his new crime-solving friend and show him just how well he’s doing, no longer the vulnerable kid teenager hooked on cocaine. Sherlock has actually made something of himself, against all odds. And maybe it’s childish, the desire to rub that in Sebastian’s face, but he thinks it’s also very well deserved.

* * *

 

“Sherlock Holmes!”

“Sebastian,” he said, holding out his hand. The other man clapped it with his own and shook it.

“Hiya, buddy. How long has it been, eight years since I last clapped eyes on you?”

Few more years than that, but like hell will Sherlock point it out.

“This is my friend, John Watson,” he said.

“Friend?”

“Colleague,” John corrected.

Ah. Of course.

John liked cases but he didn’t like Sherlock. He had been mistaken in what he thought he saw earlier. There was no positive emotion there, and any that Sherlock did perceive was a result of his own fantasies and self-delusions.

He’ll have to be very careful to remember that in the future.

“Right,” Sebastian said. “Grab a pew. Do you need anything? Coffee? Water?”

“No, we’re all sorted here, thanks.”

“So you’re doing well. You’ve been abroad a lot.”

“Well, so?”

“Flying all the way around the world twice in a month.”

He laughed. “Right. You’re doing that thing. We were at uni together, and this guy here had a trick he used to do.”

“It’s not a trick,” Sherlock said. His words were so slow, far slower than even most other people’s, nowhere near his usual lightning speed.

But it’s not a party trick and he won’t put on a show and he does not perform for Sebastian Wilkes. Not anymore.

He’s not a bloody showdog.

“He could look at you and tell you your whole life story,” Sebastian continued.

“Yes, I’ve seen him do it,” John said. Shame panged in Sherlock’s chest. Had he really thought John liked him? There was a difference between liking someone and being amused by them. Laughing at someone is a form of enjoying their presence, yes, but not a good one.

“Put the wind up everybody. We hated him. We’d come down to breakfast in the formal hall and this freak would know who you’d been shagging the previous night.”

“I simply observed,” he said. Not a freak. Not freakish. Anyone could do it.

“Go on, enlighten me. ‘Two trips a month, flying all the way around the world’? You’re quite right. How could you tell? Are you going to tell me there’s a stain on my tie from some special kind of ketchup you can only buy in Manhattan?”

“No, I—”

“Maybe it was the mud on my shoes?”

“I was just chatting with your secretary outside. She told me.”

John gave him a look and Sebastian laughed.


	9. Chapter 9

The more Sebastian kept talking, the more John regretted calling Sherlock a colleague. His only consolation was the absolute certainty that Sherlock was going to insult the living daylights out of him, display his dazzling brilliance, and then take a good chunk of this bloke’s precious money on his way out the door.

So he said nothing, smiled politely, and bided his time.

But that didn’t happen at all. Sherlock just let Sebastian insult him without saying a single word. Even when given a chance to do his amazing deductions, he passed it up, making up some bullshit lie instead.

Then Sebastian started talking about payment.

“There’s a hole in our security. Find it and we’ll pay you. Five figures,” he said. He took a check out of his pocket. “This is an advance. Tell me how he got in. There’s a bigger one on its way.”

Thank fucking god, it’s the very least Sebastian can do. It also explains Sherlock’s ‘good’ behavior a bit, even though John personally didn’t think it was good at all.

“I don’t need an incentive, Sebastian,” Sherlock said venomously, in the strangest reaction to an offer of payment that John had ever seen in his life.

“He’s, uh… He’s kidding you, obviously,” John said. “Shall I look after that for him? Thanks.”

* * *

 

Like hell was he letting any of this go. He was vaguely worried Sebastian had something over Sherlock, was blackmailing him somehow, to be honest.

Though that didn’t make any sense. Sebastian was paying Sherlock, and Sherlock was un-blackmail-able, as he had no shame.

Still.

“Two trips around the world this month,” John said. “You didn’t ask his secretary, you said that just to irritate him.”

Right? God, John hopes.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“Did you see his watch?” he asked. “The time was right, but the date was wrong. It was set two days ago. Crossed the date line twice and he didn’t alter it.”

“Within a month? How did you get that part?”

“New Breitling. Only came out this February.”

And then they went back to talking about the case, and things were normal once more.

* * *

 

Sebastian was having what looked like a very fancy business dinner, schmoozing people and telling stories, when bloody Sherlock Holmes walked up.

“It was a threat, that’s what the graffiti meant.”

“I’m kind of in a meeting,” he said. “Can you make an appointment with my secretary?”

“I don’t think this can wait. Sorry, Sebastian. One of your traders, someone who worked in your office, was _killed._ ”

“What?”

“Van Coon,” John said. “The police are at his flat.”

“Killed?”

“Sorry to interfere with everyone’s digestion,” Sherlock said. Part of the reason he doesn’t eat on cases. Also, the pain of aggravated hunger helps keep his mind sharp. “Still want to make an appointment? Would maybe nine o’clock at Scotland Yard suit?”

He was finally being his normal asshole-ish self and John secretly cheered.

Sebastian pushed his seat back and stood up. “Let’s discuss this somewhere more private, shall we?”

He led them back to the toilets and had Sherlock go over how Van Coon was killed on the way. Once there, he actually used the bathroom and kept talking the whole time. By the time he was washing his hands he had moved on to what a great guy Van Coon had been.

“Harrow, Oxford. Very bright guy. Worked in Asia for a while, so—”

“You gave him the Hong Kong accounts?” John asked.

“Lost five million in a single morning, made it all back a week later. Nerves of steel, Eddie had.”

“Who’d want to kill him?” John asked.

“We all make enemies,” he evaded.

“We don’t all end up with a bullet through your temple.”

“Not usually. Excuse me,” he said, pulling out his beeping phone. “It’s my chairman. Police have been on to him. Apparently they’re telling him it was a suicide.”

“Well, they’ve got it wrong, Sebastian. He was murdered,” Sherlock said.

“Well, I’m afraid they don’t see it like that.”

“So?”

“And neither does my boss. I hired you to do a job. Don’t get sidetracked.” He gave Sherlock one last look, and then left the bathroom.

“I thought bankers were all supposed to be heartless bastards,” John said, dripping sarcasm. God, he hated Wilkes. He’ll be glad when this case is over.

Sherlock’s jaw worked, but he said nothing.

* * *

 

John walked back into the livingroom.

“I said, could you pass me a pen?”

“What? When?”

“About an hour ago.”

He tossed him a pen from the coffee table. “Didn’t notice I’d gone out then?” And wasn’t that wonderful for his self-esteem? Though he supposed it said more about Sherlock than it did about him. It was no wonder he got lost up in that big head of his.

“I went to see about a job at that surgery,” he continued.

“How was it?”

“Great. She’s great.”

Foreign, unpleasant emotion welled up in Sherlock. “Who?”

“The job.”

“She?”

“It.”

He frowned, but let it go.

* * *

 

“How many murders is it gonna take before you start believing this maniac’s out there?” John asked. “A young girl was gunned down tonight. That’s three victims in three days. You’re supposed to be finding him.”

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. The police were incompetent and likely _couldn’t_ find the killer. Sherlock could, he was working the case, it was therefore his responsibility. Soo Lin’s death was on his head. His case, his job, his fault.

This conversation was directed at Sherlock just as much as it was at Dimmock. John just didn’t know that.

“Brian Lukis and Eddie Van Coon were working for a gang of international smugglers. A gang called the Black Lotus operating here in London right under your nose,” Sherlock said.

“Can you prove that?” Dimmock asked.

Sherlock drew himself up.

* * *

 

“I need to get some air. We’re going out tonight,” Sherlock announced.

“Actually, I’ve got a date.”

_“What?”_

“Where two people who like each other go out and have fun?”

“That’s what I was suggesting.”

“No, it wasn’t. At least I hope not.”

God help him if Sherlock had seemingly rejected him at Angelo’s only to change his mind at some unknown point and decide that they’re dating without even telling John, and right after he’s gone and asked out his new boss too. John wouldn’t even put it past him to make that big of a mess of things.

But John thought he genuinely knew better. After all, Sherlock had introduced him as his friend. Though given that he introduced Sally Donovan the same way, he obviously had a very loose understanding of the word. No. If Sherlock thought they were something more, then John would find out about it instantly when he was introduced as his boyfriend at some horribly inappropriate moment—likely one with his girlfriend present.

“Where are you taking her?”

“Er, cinema.”

“Dull, boring, predictable. Why don’t you try this?” He gave John two tickets. “In London for one night only.”

He laughed a bit. “Thanks, but I don’t come to you for dating advice.”

Sherlock just smiled.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A scene from the show sorta implied they didn't work the Black Peter case until season two and I used that scene here, but I decided it happened earlier

“You couldn’t let me have just one night off?” John asked.

‘Night off.’ Curious phrasing, implies he’s working. Options: Mycroft _is_ paying him, not for information, but to associate with Sherlock at all. Highly likely, John is a broke doctor who likes adventure and served in the military, if anyone would agree to be someone’s unwitting caretaker, it would be him.

Sherlock is not so severely autistic as to need a caretaker, however, and he does take care of himself. Mostly.

Alternative: John assumes Sherlock is here solely about the case (which he _is)_ and, in keeping with his earlier ‘colleague’ comment, sees their association as purely professional with no platonic attachments and therefore no reason for Sherlock to associate with him purely for the sake of it.

Option B is far more likely.

“Yellow Dragon Circus, in London for one day. It fits. The Tong sent an assassin to England—”

“Dressed as a tightrope walker? Come on, Sherlock, behave!”

On second thought, maybe it is Option A.

“We’re looking for a killer who can climb, who can shin up a rope. Where else would you find that level of dexterity?” he asked. “Exit visas are scarce in China. They need a pretty good reason to get out of that country. Now all I need to do is have a quick look around the place.”

“Fine. You do that, I’m gonna take Sarah for a pint.”

“I need your help,” Sherlock said, miffed.

“I do have a couple of other things on my mind this evening.”

“Like what?” John had just admitted he was working, and what could be more important than the Work?

John stared at him. “You are kidding?”

“What’s so important?”

“Sherlock, I’m right in the middle of a date. You want me to chase some killer while I’m trying to…”

“What?”

“While I’m trying to get off with Sarah,” he said loudly.

Sarah appeared, just then.

“Heyyy,” John said. “Ready?”

* * *

 

The world’s worst date in the history of the entire universe ended with John and Sarah being kidnapped by circus people/Chinese smugglers, and tied up in a dimly lit tunnel.

All because they thought that John was Sherlock, god help him.

And then they put Sarah in front of the arrow-firing device and demanded John tell them where some pin (?) was.

“I’m not Sherlock Holmes!” John shouted.

“I don’t believe you!” Shan shouted back.

“You should, you know,” Sherlock said, appearing out of nowhere. “Sherlock Holmes is nothing at all like him. How would you describe me, John? Resourceful? Dynamic? Enigmatic?”

Was Sherlock insecure? Maybe. Was he fishing for compliments? Sure. Was this entirely justified in his own mind? Most definitely.

“Late?” John suggested.

“That’s a semi-automatic. If you fire it, the bullet will travel at over a thousand meters per second.”

“Well?” Shan asked.

“Well, the radius curvature of these walls is nearly four meters. If you miss, the bullet will ricochet. Could hit anyone. Might even bounce off the tunnel and hit you.”

And then he ran and kicked over a fire barrel and set to work untying Sarah, only for someone to attempt to strangle him midway through, yet again.

John wriggled over to the mechanism and managed to knock it off target, but it was pure chance that the arrow hit Sherlock’s attacker instead of Sherlock himself.

Sherlock struggled to his feet and loosened the fabric from around his throat, though he didn’t manage to get entirely untangled. He untied Sarah for real this time, murmuring words of comfort as he did so.

“Don’t worry,” John said, still sideways on the floor. “Next date won’t be like this.”

Sarah sobbed.

* * *

 

Sherlock was working a case.

This was obvious from how often he left without a word or explanation to John, who was determined to out-stubborn him by not mentioning it. And even without that, it would have been obvious that there was a case going on, because John kept getting phone calls and emails meant for a ‘Captain Basil,’ and he answered them all honestly by telling them he had never heard of anyone by that name.

Which, really? Captain Basil? Really?

But then the case became un-ignorable when Sherlock burst into the flat at seven in the morning, dripping in blood and carrying a harpoon that was taller than he was.

“Well that was tedious,” he said.

“You went on the tube like that?” John asked.

“None of the cabs would take me,” he said. He leaned the bloody harpoon up against the wall and started stripping off his clothes even as he walked to the bathroom. He didn’t emerge for forty-five minutes, during which John made breakfast.

Sherlock reappeared wearing nothing but his blue silk dressing gown, which made John openly stare, then catch himself, turn red, and look away. He cleared his throat.

“Any particular reason you’re not wearing clothes?” he asked, stalwartly setting the table.

“I am in my own home, John. And besides, I’m hardly uncovered. I don’t see why this should offend your antiquated sense of modesty. A body is just a body. It’s transport for your consciousness and nothing more.”

“Okay,” he said, deciding to let that go in favor of the bigger issue. “So the blood. The harpoon and the blood.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “No, I haven’t suddenly taken up murder in the past twenty-four hours, but I do thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“Please tell me you weren’t stabbing some poor dead person with that thing.”

“Not a human.”

“Oh god,” John put his head in his hands and rubbed his temples. “Sherlock, what did you stab?”

“A dead pig,” he said. “I was at the butcher’s. I must say, perhaps you doctors have it right after all. I’ve found a bit morning exercise to be most invigorating.”

“That’s not… exercise.”

“But I kept at it for over half an hour. Worked up quite a sweat, blood got everywhere. The butcher fears me now.”

“Why?”

“Well, I can only guess, and it’s completely illogical, but I think the association of me and stabbing—”

“No. No, I mean, why did you stab a dead pig for half an hour?”

“I needed to know if a person of my strength and size could possibly spear a hanging pig to a wall with a single blow. And it turns, I cannot.”

“Ah, shame,” John said, hiding a smile. “I know so many people for whom dead pig stabbing skills are simply a must.”

Sherlock looked at him intently. “Would _you_ like to try stabbing the pig?”

“Thanks, but I’m good,” John said, sipping his tea. “Very considerate of you to ask, though.”

Sherlock hummed and picked at his breakfast.

It was weird, so very weird, but John could get used to this.


	11. Chapter 11

Stanley Hopkins came around while they were still eating. Sherlock immediately pushed his meager plate away and led the young detective into the livingroom. John sighed and followed.

“Holmes, sir, you’ve gotta help me. I’m having absolutely no luck with this Peter Carey case, and it’s my first big case, ya know? I’m the new guy, fresh out of uni. Whole force thinks of me as a little kid, I think. This is my one big chance. I’ve got to prove myself to Lestrade.”

“And I assume that you don’t want him to know I helped?” Sherlock asked.

Hopkins shifted uncomfortably. “Well,” he said. “Yeah.”

Sherlock grinned. “That can be arranged,” he said. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “What leads do you have so far?”

“Well,” he said. “Um. No one really liked him that much. No friends, plenty of enemies. Practically everyone who met him hated the guy, actually.”

“So, no leads.”

“Well,” he said, scratching at the back of his neck. “It’s possible his family did it. Prime suspects, I guess.”

“Uh-huh,” Sherlock said. “And that phone that was found at the crime scene, what do you make of that?”

“I, uh… It belonged to the victim?”

“How did you come by that conclusion?”

Hopkins beamed. “Well, sir, it was clearly a man’s phone. Bit bigger than the standard size—common with the older folks, though. The case was pretty ugly, built for durability, one of those ones that people with rougher sorts of jobs tend to get. It was all worn and scuffed and scratched up too, clearly treated roughly. Reason for the case, that. And,” he said proudly. “I took the case off and his initials were engraved on the back of the phone. P.C. Peter Carey.”

“A logical conclusion,” Sherlock said, and the kid detective grinned. “Why don’t you go over the main facts of the case? It can’t hurt for us to hear the story told again, and John doesn’t know it yet.”

“Alright,” Hopkins said. “Peter Carey, born in 1960, fifty years old, was found dead last week. He was a retired crab fisherman. Wildly successful, hence the early retirement. ‘Bout twelve years ago, he bought a crab boat called the Sea Unicorn and captained it for a few seasons. He retired to a nice place in Sussex six years ago.

“Uhh, the guy was very strictly religious, Christian, ya know. Nobody really liked him. His only family is his wife and eighteen-year-old daughter, and he was horribly abusive to them. Everybody knew about it, too, but the Sussex police could never get any charges to stick. He had absolute control over those girls. It was sick.

“He was a drunk, got in bar fights a lot, and at least he served a bit of time for that. Apparently he ran his ship the way he ran his house. People called ‘im Black Peter. He had this big black beard, ya know, and then there was his reputation. No shortage of motive in the case, certainly.

“He had this sort of a… man cave, I guess? Little shed type thing outside that he renovated. Called it the cabin. Spent almost all his time there, even slept out there, and nobody else ever went inside. His own family had never even seen the inside of it. Fucking weird, if you ask me.

“We’ve got a witness report that two days before the murder, though, that a couple of men’s voices were heard talking in there. Completely indistinct conversation, witness doesn’t remember a word of what was said. Just happened to be passing by and then heard about the murder a few days later.

“At about two o’clock Wednesday morning, the daughter heard him scream something terrible, but she didn’t think nothing of it. He gets ranting and raving at nothing when he’s drunk, and he had been in a foul mood the day before and drinking everything in sight.

“It wasn’t until noon the next day that his family got concerned enough to actually set foot in the place to check on him. Found him lyin’ dead right then and there. Frightened them something terrible, it did. I was on the scene within the hour, and Lestrade gave me the case, and it’s the worst, bloodiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. He’d been stabbed straight through the middle of the chest with a harpoon. Pinned to the fucking wall with it, in fact. Like a pinned beetle. Bloody horrible. And his face, trapped in the middle of a scream…

“Anyway, I searched the whole scene, and I know your methods, Mr. Holmes, but there was, like, no evidence.”

Sherlock raised a single eyebrow and expressed volumes with just that. Hopkins turned a bit red.

“I swear!” he said. “There was no sign of a break-in or even a struggle. We got a couple of prints, but only partials and all from different fingers, and even that didn’t turn up any matches in the system. There weren’t even any bloody footprints.”

“I’ve seen many crimes committed over the years, Hopkins, and yet none of them were committed by beings with wings. There are always footprints, and they can give you an entire rough profile of the killer, you just didn’t find them. Unless you are proposing that an angel killed Peter Carey?”

Hopkins glared.

 _“Anyway,”_ he said. “Vic was fully dressed in the middle of the night, so he expected the murderer. There was a bottle of rum and two dirty glasses sitting out on the coffee table too. Pre-arranged appointment in the middle of the night. Whatever they were doing was a big secret. I’m not actually stupid, you know,” he said. “I think he was having an affair with his murderer. Lover’s quarrel gone wrong. It was obviously a crime of passion. The harpoon had been mounted on the wall earlier, as a decoration. The killer went into a rage and grabbed whatever was nearest.”

Sherlock hummed and demanded to see the crime scene photos and be given access to Carey’s financial records. He examined the records with great interest, and then started shouting and whirling about, throwing on his coat and scarf and whisking John along with him, announcing that they had to go to Sussex.

John grabbed his gun and coat and tried to hide a grin.


	12. Chapter 12

A few minutes into the ride to Sussex, Hopkins remembered a suspicious ledger found at the scene and produced it. Sherlock called him incompetent and cut him to the quick with his insults. Hopkins glared, and they examined it together.

It soon became obvious that Carey was a money launderer, and these were his off-the-books records.

“Of course,” Sherlock said. “He only fished for two seasons, then he spent some time travelling before he settled down. No one makes that much money crab fishing, not unless they’re supplementing it somehow. I should have seen it earlier. Early retirement, no other income, of course he was doing something illegal.”

“J.H.N. and C.P.R.,” Hopkins said. “It looks like J.H.N. is involved in the laundering process somehow, probably a banker or something. And then C.P.R. must be a client.”

“No,” Sherlock said. “Wrong. C.P.R. is the abbreviation for a shell company they use. Obviously.”

“Okay,” John said. “Well, if this J.H.N. is his partner, then that’s probably who he was having his secret meeting with in the middle of the night. Probably also the murderer, too. Lots of room for something to wrong in that sort of business. And clearly neither of them were very scrupulous men.”

Sherlock huffed, amused. “Clearly,” he said. “Constable, this should have been the very first thing you brought to my attention. It changes the nature of the case completely. My previous theories did not factor in money laundering at all. Where precisely was this ledger found?”

“On the floor of the cabin.”

“It has a bloodstain. Was the blood splattered on top of it, or was it dropped on top of some blood?”

“Dropped on top. The blood was on the sideboard of the wall, and the ledger fell against it.”

“Ah. So it was dropped after the crime was committed, then.”

“Yes. I figured the murderer was holding it and dropped it in his panic after he killed Carey. Oh, and there was a knife, a switchblade. Found at the vic’s feet, still closed.”

“Of course,” Sherlock said, steepling his fingers. “And nothing was taken?”

“No, sir. Nothing.”

“Good. Very good.”

* * *

 

They went out to Carey’s house, spoke briefly with the family, who were decidedly not grieving. The widow was haggard and looked the picture of exhaustion, skin covered up as much as she could, but nothing was going to hide her obvious black eye. The daughter was a small wisp of a teenager who didn’t hide her bruises and had a defiant gleam in her eye. She told them she was glad her dad was dead and that she hoped the murderer got away with it, but if they did catch him, then she would like to meet and thank him.

They were quickly dismissed as suspects.

They went out to the cabin, which lived up to its name in that it was decorated quite elaborately as a ship’s cabin. There were clear signs of a failed attempt at breaking in through both the door and the window—the marks new and made with a pocket knife.

Which led to a nine-hour stakeout in the woods nearby on the off chance the would-be burglar would come back and try again.

It wasn’t as boring as John thought it would be, actually, as he was treated to the sight of Sherlock trying to be still and quiet when he didn’t want to be. The man was basically telepathically projecting ‘I want a cigarette’ as loud as possible to the world at large. John had no doubt that if he had brought any with him, he would have chain-smoked his way through an entire pack by now.

At around hour four, they sent Hopkins into town on a run to a convenience store to pick up snacks and water bottles. Sherlock made a case for cigarettes too, and was ignored, despite his offered bribe of twenty quid.

It was well dark out by the time anything happened, and in the interim, John had decided that Hopkins was a nice enough kid, bright, and with a good future. If he kept on track, he’d make DI one day.

Then finally their burglar showed up.

He was a university student, Hopkins’ age or younger, small, pale, and visibly shaking with nerves. He was hesitant and skittish as he went into the now-unlocked cabin, and turned on the light. Through the window, they saw him examine every book in the shelf and search the entire cabin, getting increasingly frustrated, before flipping the light off and making to leave.

Hopkins sprung up and had him cuffed the second the man stepped out the door.

He gasped, paled, then burst into tears.

“Oh, god,” Sherlock groaned.

“I swear I didn’t kill him!” he said. “I didn’t do it!”

Hopkins rolled his eyes and read him his rights. “Alright, now first of all, what’s your name?”

“J-John Hopley Neligan.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Uh, is this—is this off the record?”

“No, of course not. Why would this be off the record?”

Neligan looked up at them miserably.

“Oh, just confess already,” Sherlock said.

And so he did. To money laundering. Which he only got into because it was the family business and his dad basically forced him, before dying himself. Neligan had been trying to get out of it, but Carey wouldn’t let him, and he firmly suspected that Carey had killed his father, but he couldn’t prove it, and no body had ever been found. He had come to the cabin to find the ledger of accounts and destroy it, get rid of the incriminating evidence and finally leave the money laundering business behind for good.

He swore up and down that he hadn’t killed Carey and had never even been to the cabin before last night. Hopkins actually laughed at that, and then charged him with murder. He thanked Sherlock and John quickly for their help, and then radioed into the local police station and took Neligan down there without another word.

Sherlock gave a grimacing smile and spent the cab ride back to London absorbed in his phone.


End file.
